With A Face Only A Mother Could Love
by redireas
Summary: ...Unfortunately, this does not apply to James Potter. T for Language.


**A/N: Here we go people, another oneshot to add to my ever-mounting list of oneshots. While attempting to write true stories, I am imagining lengthier ones as oneshots that all overlap to make a nice plot. Sigh. This is pathetic. **

**Summary: With a face only a mother could love… unfortunately this does not apply to James Potter. (T for language.)**

**Disclaimer: I own the plot, JKR's got the rest. Am I done yet?**

**With A Face Only A Mother Could Love**

I am in a shithole.

I'm not talking just any normal, not-too-deep/mildly- mess of stink. I mean a shithole of a whirlwind of a dilemma of a crisis all mashed into one very unpleasant revelation: I believe I am developing a crush on James Potter.

Just shoot me now to cease this suffering.

How, you might ask, is it possible to find that worthless imbecile of a man attractive? Is it the fact that his hair is annoyingly beautiful and makes every woman swoon at the sight (although I am taking a potion to cure that condition, it has yet to work)? Or maybe it's his surprisingly high grades despite his extremely rare study sessions? Or _maybe_ it's just the fact that he's too bloody perfect for his own good?

I hope to God someone put a spell on me and these are not my own, personal and once innocent thoughts.

_**Reasons on Which I Am Basing the Idea that I have a Terrible Problem on my Hands:**_

_**1. I find it difficult to formulate sentences in his presence.** The other morning I was attempting to communicate to him my need for the marmalade and I somehow ended up calling his mother an onion._

_**2. I have developed a sudden interest in Qudditch.** In seven years I have seen only five and a half games. (Marlene was injured during the last one, so I figured I was let off the hook halfway through and marched over to the Three Broomsticks for a butterbeer. I brought one back for Marlene, of course.) Now I'm attending matches left and right. I'm sorry to say that I do indeed own Potter's jersey, although it is magically hidden due to the risk of Sirius seeing and announcing my secret fancy to the entire Hogwarts crowd with a chorus of "James and Li-ly sitting in the Womping Willow". It sounds painful, but Sirius insists it can be quite fun._

_**3. While at these dreaded Qudditch events, I have occasionally found myself cheering when James gets the Quaffl-ingy. **A horrid habit. I must stop before Emmeline catches and outs me. I'm much too easily read. _

_Note to self: become thicker skinned._

_**4. I've thought about running my fingers through his hair. **During Transfiguration on Tuesday, while James sat in front of me (and his hair sort of sticks up cutely in the back) I mentally caressed it._

**_5. I think he looks sexy in his Quidditch trousers._**

_**6. I have smiled at him fourteen times in the past three hours. **When he wasn't looking, obviously._

_**7. My salivary glands went crazy when I saw him shirtless **after the Gryffindors beat Slytherin on Sunday. I had a drool puddle on my shirt the rest of the afternoon. _

**_8. I have actually considered what it would be like to snog James in a broom closet._**

_**9. In the past week, I have stuffed wet tissues in my ears on numerous occasions in an attempt to distract me from that Hot Evil Man. **You'd think cold material dripping water into your ear canal would distract you for even a moment. It hasn't. _

_**10. I have considered buying fancy ** and I'm not quite sure why._

_**11. I laughed like a dying hyena when James told me the stupid hag-and-a-hippogriff joke for the hundred and fiftieth time. **I usually tell him to shut up, it's crude and unpleasant and will you please stop making those hand gestures?_

_**12. Last Saturday he convinced me to try his firewhiskey. **I did and I puked. But I was in his lap so I didn't mind. _

**_13. When he told me for the hundred and fifty-ninth time that I am a workaholic, I realized that he was right._**

_**14. I can no longer eat gorgonzola **because every time I see it, it reminds me of the hag and the hippogriff which coincidently leads me back to Potter._

**_15. When I'm bored, I sometimes imagine him wearing boxers with little snitches on them-_**

"That's a bit racy isn't it?"

I swear, every hair on my neck is sticking up at a ninety degree angle and I can't even turn around because I am too afraid to look this man in the face after this particular confession which he apparently has read.

I swallow and tell my heart to stop pitter-pattering. "What are you talking about?" I ask, as though I really had no idea that James Potter had just read the most embarrassing sentence I have ever written in my entire life.

But his chaser arms are quick, and before I can say Save-The-House-Elves, he's got that little bugger of a paper tight within his hand and he is grinning like he's just received five hundred points in one impossible play.

"James," I plead but try not to sound too needy. That would only egg the pesky bloke on. "Give it back please."

"What? Are you writing about me?" I prayed to Merlin, or God, or whoever could control whatever the hell James would do next, that James wound not open that parchment and read it. Of course, he did.

"No." I reached out to grab the paper from him, desperate to hide my imperfect truth. Naturally, James only had to lift the page a few inches higher for it to be out of reach and for me to produce a full frontal collision with his chest.

Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Just awfully bad timing.

Because while I was mesmerized by his James-y smell and how his shirt fit nicely across his chest, the sodding git was scanning the paper, probably all selfish-like for his name to crop up or something.

"So, is there someone else named 'James' or 'Potter'?"

Bingo.

But damnit, his teeth were so perfect! How could you not love him?

Uh oh. He wasn't putting down the paper. "Come on," I begged a bit more. "Hand it over."

This was ridiculous. Usually by now James would have had his fun, ready to hand over the paper and make a few more stupid jokes to make me feel like more of an idiot before letting it die down. Even James Potter knew when to stop.

But he wasn't stopping.

And he most certainly was not handing it over.

Instead he kept reading.

I couldn't watch. I knew he wasn't smiling anymore, which was enough to tell me what I needed to know. So I stood there next to him, wishing a herd of dragons would just swoop upon me and take me away somewhere to a place where things were peaceful and nothing was confusing and no ones name was James Potter.

He clears his throat and places down the parchment carefully. I try very hard not to cry.

"Is this how you really feel?" His voice was very throaty, almost how mine felt if it were put into a sound.

I was preparing myself for the blow. The strike. The what-the-hell-would-I-want-do-with-you lecture. Just as I was feeling strong and building up this wall so that he couldn't hurt me anymore than he already had, the feeling was gone. I wanted to take the stupid list and run as far away as I could give James Potter the satisfaction of skipping off and reciting the dumb confessions to his stupid little friends.

So that's what I did.

I took the paper from him and I set off. I wasn't quite sure where I was headed, just as long as it was far away from that prick.

I ended up at the grounds, even though James called after me a couple times. How could he be such a jerk? Did he realize how embarrassing it was to have your heart placed so bluntly on paper for others to read? And I hadn't even meant it to be public in the first place…

Crying does not come easily to me. I've tried at weddings and funerals to squeeze out a few tears but come up dry. And now here I was, crying over a damn James Potter.

Funny how life works sometimes, isn't it?

And so, in the middle of this cry-fest that has actually been building up for years, the man of the moment chooses to sit by me even if I am ripping away at blades of grass pretending they are his head.

I'm confused when he doesn't say anything. So I start. "What do you want?" I ask a bit more harshly than I had intended.

"A lot of things." _Me too_, I think and rip apart another Potter grass head, _like you to finally learn to stop being such an effing jerk._ "You to stop crying, for one."

If I could muster more tears, I would've sobbed harder just to spite him.

"Will you just go away?" I finally said snottily. There should be a law against people with his kind of persistency.

"No." He answered shortly and just looked up at the sky.

"Why not?"

"Because."

I fixed him with what I thought was an appropriate glare before I realized that I had stopped crying. Damn him.

"I don't have any boxers with snitches on them, but I do have a pair with little broomsticks…"

At first I thought James was mocking me, but when I found his eyes he was completely and utterly serious.

"I also think my Quidditch trousers are sexy and will not complain if you choose to run your fingers through my hair."

He smiled and, I couldn't help it, I did too. It was contagious.

"I personally find the hag and the hippogriff to be the funniest dirty but not too dirty joke around. I would prefer to snog you somewhere more comfortable than a broom closet."

I felt myself blush.

"And my mother sort of is an onion."

I laughed.

Maybe having a crush on Potter was acceptable. Not entirely convenient, considering I hated his very core, but acceptable.

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